Free Turning Thirty by Mike Gayle Page B

exactly what I wanted from life and I was happy.
    This didn’t mean that I didn’t like anything new. I did. What it did mean was that the new things I let into my life were mostly variations on the old things that were already in my life – variations on a very strict theme. Elaine used to think it was insane how happy the status quo made me, but as I explained to her, the point of life is to learn from your mistakes and not to go out and see if you can make some new ones. So, after a disastrous flirtation with pastels, beige and even yellow, I finally decided that dark blue/black clothing was my clothing for life. Soon I discovered that it didn’t show up food stains and I could put pretty much everything I owned in the same wash without fear of the colours running.
    Wandering through the city centre, in search of new clothes that might bolster my confidence for this bold new stage of my life, I saw an alarming number of attractive young women and tried to imagine myself with them. There we are, walking down the street, hand in hand, laughing gaily, her in one of those breezy slip dresses, even though there is a distinct chill in the air, and me in my dark blue/black outfit. Then, in my imaginary scenario, I catch a glimpse of myself in a shop window and the spell is broken. It has nothing to do with the clothes: it is more a look on my face that seems to ask, ‘Is this journey really necessary?’ The reason for this, of course, is the same as the reason for the colour of my clothes: at twenty-nine I knew exactly what kind of woman I wanted.
    I wanted one like I’d already had in the past but without the annoying bits.
    I wanted someone I already knew – but who didn’t know me so well that my imperfections would put her off.
    I wanted someone with whom I could just be me.
    But, like the elusive item of clothing you create in your mind’s eye – the one that’s the right colour, the right shade, the right style – the girlfriend in my head wasn’t available and that alone made me feel like giving up on shopping for ever.
    On a rather reckless impulse – no doubt spurred on by an impending fit of melancholy – I walked into a clothes shop just off New Street that from the outside seemed suitably hip and happening – if ‘hip’ and ‘happening’ are still considered hip and happening words by those in the know. Maybe I’ve got this all wrong, I told myself. Maybe the new isn’t so terrifying, after all. Emanating from the shop’s speakers was a rumbling bass track from the loudest song I’d ever heard – it was only a notch or two down from making my ears bleed. In the far corner of the shop by the rear door I saw that they actually had a DJ with his decks. This both amused and saddened me: amused, because this guy in his early twenties, with his goatee beard, beanie hat and trainers like the ones I wore for PE when I was eleven, undoubtedly thought he was the epitome of cool even though his core audience was shopping for trousers, shirts and underpants; and saddened, because just a few years ago I, too, would have thought DJing in a clothes shop was a cool way to spend an afternoon.
    In a fit of self-chastisement I threw caution and my dark blue/black-only philosophy to the wind and grabbed a couple of brightly coloured shirts that caught my eye. I approached one of the shop’s cooler-than-thou assistants who was sneering by the clothing racks. He was about twenty-one, with the body of a stick insect and wearing a shirt like the one that I had in my hands. Now, because intimidation by trendy clothes-shop assistants was a new experience for me (although, from what Elaine had told me, it was a regular occurrence in women’s clothes shops), I threw back my shoulders, sucked in my stomach, and asked him where the changing rooms were. He looked at me, his features only a notch or two down from a grimace, then shrugged